La Fontaine en estampes, ou nouvelle édition des fables, plus complète que les précédentes, ornée de cent dix gravures en taille-douce, imprimées sur le texte ; précédée de la vie de l'auteur, extraite du nouvel ouvrage de M. Walckenaer, membre de l'Institut

Paris, Auguste Nepveu, bookseller, Passage des Panoramas, 1821. Quarto, xxviii and 462 pages.

A new edition of the Fables, described on the title page as "more complete than the preceding editions", illustrated with 110 half-page intaglio engravings printed within the text and an engraved title vignette. In the present copy, all 111 compositions have been finely coloured by hand. Rochambeau, 305; Desprès, p. 142, no. 63.

Twentieth-century full green calf, smooth spine decorated with gilt fillets, rolls and floral tools, gilt rolls to the headcaps, boards framed with a gilt roll, double gilt fillets to the board edges, gilt turn-ins, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, all edges gilt.

Spine and outer edges of the boards slightly faded, with some foxing and a small scuff at the head of the rear board. Lower right corners of pages ix-xi supplied.

The principal distinction of this copy lies in its abundant and entirely hand-coloured illustration. Copies of the edition are ordinarily described with the engravings in black; the colouring of both the title vignette and all 110 scenes therefore appears to be a special enhancement, giving this edition intended for young readers the brilliance of a true picture book.

The illustrations transmit, in a more compact form, one of the great achievements of eighteenth-century French book production. They reproduce compositions drawn by Jean-Baptiste Oudry for the Fables choisies published by Montenault through Desaint, Saillant and Durand between 1755 and 1759. Originally conceived for a sumptuous four-volume folio edition, the designs were reduced, compressed and sometimes modified in order to fit the present half-page format. Rochambeau observed that they had been "cropped on every side" to enter this restricted space; the transformation nevertheless reveals Nepveu's central purpose, which was to transfer an iconography formerly reserved for grand libraries into a manageable and accessible reading edition.

The title vignette encapsulates this lineage. It adapts the celebrated frontispiece invented by Oudry and engraved under the direction of Charles-Nicolas Cochin, in which Aesop points out the bust of La Fontaine to the animals assembled around him. In the monumental eighteenth-century edition the scene introduced a masterpiece of French engraving; reduced and coloured in Nepveu's volume, it becomes the inviting entrance to a book for young readers.

The images were not the only means by which the work was adapted for a new public. The text is preceded by a Précis de la vie de J. de La Fontaine, abridged from Charles-Athanase Walckenaer's Histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de J. de La Fontaine, published in 1820. A member of the Institut de France from 1813 and its president in 1821, Walckenaer had recently renewed the biography of the fabulist through a more methodical examination of his life, personal connections and writings. Nepveu selected a condensed version suited to the educational purpose of the present edition.

The notes printed beneath the fables extend this intention. They explain obsolete vocabulary, mythological references, difficult expressions and proper names that might impede a child's understanding. The illustrations attract the eye while the commentary directs the reading: the moral instruction traditionally associated with the Fables is joined by an introduction to language, literature and classical history.

Nepveu's edition consequently occupies a distinctive place in the long afterlife of Oudry's designs. It does not attempt to reproduce the monumental luxury of the 1755-1759 edition, but preserves its narrative power. Each composition is reduced to its principal figures, essential setting and decisive action. The hand-colouring intensifies this immediacy, distinguishing the animals, enlivening the landscapes and transforming the sequence of fables into a miniature theatre.

This passage from aristocratic folio to educational volume reflects the new circulation of images in the early nineteenth century. The lavish Enlightenment iconography of a classic of the Grand Siècle becomes the basis of family reading, transmitting its literary inheritance through the appeal of pictures and the clarity of explanation.

A rare and attractive copy, remarkable for the complete hand-colouring of all 111 engravings. Nepveu here adapted Oudry's iconographic masterpiece for young readers, while Walckenaer's biography and the explanatory notes offered a renewed approach to the text: the La Fontaine of the Enlightenment transmitted through image and colour to the childhood of the Romantic age.